Background—Our Origins

In the 1990s Medard Gabel, as Executive Director of the World
Game Institute, developed and delivered a series of global simulations for
Motorola Corporation for their executive training programs. One version
of these simulations placed Motorola executives in charge of the global
economy.

Players were in teams that ran different regions of the world—China,
India, Europe, Japan, Russia, North America, Latin America, Africa, etc.
The simulation was loaded with real world facts and statistics about resources,
capacities, and problems. The goal was to solve the problems each region
confronted in the real world.

Players learned quickly that they needed to cooperate in the complexly
interlinked global economy. They learned how to make limited resources
go a long way, how to negotiate, resolve conflicts, set goals and priorities.
They also learned a large amount about global and regional economics. The
fact that they were having a bit of fun running the world instead of just
one of the world’s largest multinational corporations didn't hurt.

In debriefings it was also pointed out that Motorola itself was not unlike
the world: It had limited resources, competing needs, and complex interactions
of different teams. In the original three “rounds” of the simulation,
teams would seek to meet their own needs, then to solve the health, education,
environmental, and economic problems of their region. Eventually, we added
a fourth round in which players switched roles. Now, instead of running
China or Europe, they ran Motorola in China or Europe; instead of being
charged with the responsibility to solve the region’s problems, they
were instructed—based on what they had learned in the previous rounds
about the socio-economic and cultural realities of the region—to come
up with answers to the following:

What products should Motorola be selling in your region?

What products should we be developing/how should we be investing
our R & D resources?

What should we be doing as responsible corporate citizens in
this part of the world?”

One of the constructive limitations placed on the “What Motorola
should be doing” in the various regions was that charity was not allowed.
Whatever products or services were suggested had to be profitable. The corporation
had to remain viable.

The results were electrifying. The simulation gave players permission and
stimulation to think outside the box. Motorola products and capacities for
innovation and product development were applied to meeting basic human needs
and problems the players were grappling with in the previous rounds. Innovative
products, as well as marketing and customer financing techniques leaped
out.

This experience further opened my eyes to the powerful role multinational
enterprise could play in addressing the basic human needs and problems facing
the developing world. Corporations possess a knowledge base, skill set,
resources, entrepreneurial mind set, and ability to act quickly that, that
if harnessed to meet the needs of the entire world rather than just those
of us rich enough to afford them under current economic conditions, could
have a profound impact.

It also became increasingly clear that the nation state was going to have
an impossible time meeting the needs of its people by itself. The demise
of the Soviet Union and the huge amount of privatization of former government
functions suggested that even the nation state was beginning to realize
it was in over its head and needed some help.

My experience with Motorola was then coupled with the mammoth research project
that went into writing Global Inc.: An Atlas of the Multinational Corporation.
Here I further realized the size, scale, scope, and resources of the multinational—and
that there was a vast market that was not being reached by corporate enterprise.

The idea of the global economic pyramid and the portion being reached—and
not being reached—by multinational enterprise became clear. The market
for all the corporations we were studying and mapping for the Global Inc.
atlas could be expanded to include four billion more people. Equally important
was the more than $2 trillion being spent by this segment of the world’s
population.

Utilizing the strengths of modern multinational corporate enterprise as
a means of meeting the needs of the world’s poor became more than
a fantasy: It was now economically feasible.

BigPicture Consulting was born to bring together our expertise with the
feasibility of this dream in order to help corporations do well while doing
good.